Sandy Harwitt

When Transsexual Renee Richards First Played In The U.S. Open

September 1, 2024 by Admin

by Randy Walker

@TennisPublisher

On September 1, 1977, one of the most sensational events happened in the history of the U.S. Open. As documented in my book “On This Day In Tennis History,” Renee Richards, the 43-year-old transsexual who fought for more than year for the right to play in the women’s singles competition at a major tennis championship, was beaten in the first round by Wimbledon champion Virginia Wade, 6-1, 6-4. Barry Lorge of the Washington Post described the match as a media event as “a swarm of photographers, broadcasters and reporters were on hand to record the details of what was purposed to be a grand gesture for human rights by some, and a freak show by others.”

It was only two weeks earlier on August 17, 1977, where the United States Tennis Association was basically forced to accept Richards into the women’s field at the U.S. Open, as excepted below from the aforementioned book:

The United States Tennis Association rules that 43-year-old transsexual Renee Richards will be allowed to play in the women’s singles championships at the U.S. Open. The USTA statement issued on the day reads, “For the past year, the USTA has been confronted with the difficult problem of balancing consideration for an individual transsexual with considerations of fairness for women tennis players in general, especially the lower-ranked players. On the basis of medical authority, the USTA has had reason to believe that a postoperative transsexual may retain some physical and competitive advantages. It appeared to the USTA that a generally accurate, easily administered and objective test, such as the Olympic type chromosome test, was a desirable screening process in determining sex for the purpose of athletics. The New York State Court ruled in favor of an individual transsexual and places restrictions on the use of the chromosome test. As a result of this proceeding, the USTA will accept Dr. Richards as an entrant into the U.S. Open tennis championships.”

The legal decision came down the day before, on August 16, 1977, as reported by Neil Amdur in the New York Times. Wrote Amdur, “State Supreme Court Justice Alfred M. Ascione issued a preliminary injunction yesterday barring the United States Tennis Association, the United States Open Tennis Championship Committee and the Women’s Tennis Association from excluding the 42-year-old transsexual from the world’s richest tournament because of her inability to pass the Barr body test.”

Amdur reported that it was a 13-page decision “that could become a landmark” in that Ascione ruled that having to subject Richards to a test in order to play in the U.S. Open was “grossly unfair, discriminatory and inequitable, and violative of her rights under the Human Rights Law of this state.”

“It seems clear that defendants knowingly instituted this test for the sole purpose of preventing plaintiff from participating in the tournament,” wrote Ascione. “The only justification ‐ for using a sex‐determination test in athletic competition is to prevent fraud, i.e., men masquerading as women competing against women.”

Despite the loss to the No. 3 seeded Wade, Richards reached the doubles final partnering with Betty Ann Grubb Stuart (the mother of future U.S. pro Taylor Dent), losing to Martina Navratilova and Betty Stove, 6-1, 7-6. (Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MSbUODDccU)

Wrote Bud Collins in his volume “The Bud Collins History of Tennis” of the episode, “Transsexual Renee Richards won her year-long legal struggle for acceptance in women’s tournaments when a New York judge ruled that she could not be barred from the U.S. Open for failing the Olympic chromosome test. The court ruled that medical evidence proved Richards was “female,” and the USTA and WTA dropped efforts to bar her. She lost in the first round of the Open singles, but reached the doubles final with Californian Betty Ann Grubb Stuart before losing to Navratilova and Stove, 6-1, 7-6. Thereafter, Richards—the lone entrant to use both men’s and women’s dressing rooms at the U.S. Championships—became a regular competitor on the women’s circuit, though several players defaulted against her in protest. Renee lost to Wimbledon champs in her Forest Hills ventures: To Neale Fraser, 6-0, 6-1, 6-1, in 1960, and Wade, 6-1, 6-4 in 1977, both first rounders. She did win a minor tournament, Pensacola, Fla., defeating Evert in the semis (Jeanne Evert, that is), 6-1, 4-6, 6-2, and Caroline Stoll in the final, 6-2, 6-2.”

As Sandra Harwitt wrote in her chapter on Richards in her book “The Greatest Jewish Tennis Players of All Time,” Richards considered living a low-profile life in California, but “tennis was essential in her life” and she wanted to play competitively.

“Tennis was a refuge because it’s something that I love to do, and it was something that I was good at and I could have success at doing. And it was so clear-cut — the geometry of a tennis court and you against your opponent,” Renee said on the NPR “Talk of the Nation” radio show.

Wrote Harwitt, “It was after she played in and won a women’s tournament in La Jolla, California where she was discovered that she was indeed a former man playing in the women’s event.”

Gene Scott, an old friend and fellow student at Yale of the former Richard Raskin, invited Richards to compete in the WTA tournament he was promoting and directing, the Tennis Week Open in South Orange, N.J. However, when it was announced that Richards would be playing in the event, 25 of the 32 entrants in the tournament withdrew in protest. Richards reached the semifinals at the event.

“At the Orange Lawn Tennis Club last week, reactions to Richards’ crusade seemed to ricochet about like volleys across the sex barrier, veering from astonishment to suspicion, sympathy, resentment and, more often than not, utter confusion,” wrote Ray Kennedy in Sports Illustrated as seen here https://vault.si.com/vault/1976/09/06/shed-rather-switchand-fight

Angela Buxton’s Unique Chapter In Tennis History

August 17, 2020 by Admin

Angela Buxton, a top British player from the 1950s best known for her unique doubles partnership with Althea Gibson, passed away on August 14, 2020. She is regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of the Jewish faith of all time and featured in Sandy Harwitt’s book “The Greatest Jewish Tennis Players of All Time” (for sale and download here: https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Jewish-Tennis-Players-Time/dp/193755936X/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Greatest+jewish+tennis+players+of+all+time&qid=1597662241&sr=8-2

The following is a brief excerpt from the chapter on Buxton from Harwitt’s book.

Her first Wimbledon experience came in 1952 as a lucky loser. She fell in the first round, but in the Plate event — a separate tournament that used to be held for the Wimbledon first-round losers — she advanced to the quarterfinals. The experience offered Angela a clear picture of where she stood in the world of tennis and what she learned was that she had vast room for improvement.

Angela immediately knew the place to make the necessary repairs to her game would be California. She asked her father to finance an extended trip to the United States to which he readily agreed as long as her mother went along and that she made one promise to him: “He was in the cinema business so it appealed to him very much that I would go to California as long as I would visit the studios and say I was Harry Buxton’s daughter.” With the backing from her father secured, Angela went ahead and made all the arrangements by herself. Looking at that now in the context of today’s world of tennis she said, “I did all the arrangements myself. I went to the library and found out where all the tournaments were, like in Riverside and Bakersfield, and entered them all from England. I found out the place to play was the LA Tennis Club and a chap called Perry Jones was running it so I wrote to him. I mean, looking back, that’s what it takes. You can’t expect to be successful if your parents are pushing you. At the time this trip was organized, I was 17.”

The Buxtons rented an apartment for six months on the tree-lined block overlooking the LA Tennis Club and settled in. She started to play at the LA Tennis Club, but a few weeks later the arrangements she made fell apart. Jones approached her with the bad news: “He turned around and gave me my money back and said he’s sorry but I couldn’t play at the club any longer. I asked, ‘why not?’ I don’t think he actually said it but I found out later that it was because I was Jewish. So there I was overlooking the courts I couldn’t play on.”

Unwilling to allow the trip to California to become a disappointment, Angela went about resolving the problem by “turning a disadvantage into an advantage.” Research led to the La Cienega public courts, which was a treasure trove location for tennis. Pancho Gonzalez played there because he also was “excluded” from private clubs. And it was at La Cienega where she took lessons from the great legend, Bill Tilden. She also secured a temporary job working at Arzy’s, the racket shack at La Cienega.

In the spring of 1953, back in England, Angela felt she was ready to be a contender. But in April she suffered a humiliating 6-0, 6-0 loss to Doris Hart, the reigning Wimbledon champion, at the Bournemouth Hardcourt Championships. Disheartened, she believed she’d just been wasting her father’s money by pursuing tennis and was going to dedicate herself to becoming a dress designer. Nevertheless, she didn’t totally abandon tennis and in October 1953, Angela decided to conclude her tennis career in Israel, playing at the Maccabiah Games. As luck would have it, Angela blossomed at the Games, defeating the top 10-rated Anita Kanter from the United States 6-2, 6-3 to win the singles gold medal. She also secured gold in the doubles.

“It was a wonderful experience,” said Buxton, of participating in the Maccabiah Games. “I have such fond memories of it. All the footballers came along to cheer me on. I made some wonderful friends that are still friends. In my particular case, that’s when I virtually announced to everyone I was Jewish. I thought that would be fun to go with all these other people from different sports and go to Israel to play tennis. This was very big in the international press that I had won two gold medals. People wanted to know what the Maccabiah Games were and they were the Jewish Olympics, so I had announced that I was Jewish.”

Instead of the Maccabiah Games being her good-bye to tennis, it acted as her impetus to refocus herself on the sport. During that Bournemouth Hardcourt Championships where she lost to Hart, she had also met Jimmy Jones, a Daily Mirror sportswriter, the owner of a tennis magazine, and an accomplished teaching pro. He had offered to help her at the time, but she turned him down. On her voyage back to England from Israel, she formulated a plan: She’d now reach out to Jimmy Jones for help. Jones offered a new and different approach to tennis for Angela, stressing that tennis is not just about hitting tennis balls. There were tactical strategies to be learned and a whole psychology to the art of playing winning tennis.

Almost immediately, Angela went from being on the fringes of the sport in England to being invited onto the 1954 and 1955 Wightman Cup team for her country. In 1955, she would be a Wimbledon singles quarterfinalist. Just one year later, Angela Buxton would earn international headlines, and not just because she would have her most successful moment in singles by reaching the Wimbledon final, losing to American Shirley Fry 6-3, 6-1.

Angela’s fame would be forever tied to the doubles arena and a special and unique winning partnership. In England’s world of tennis, despite proving herself of doubles star quality, Angela was not paired with a player of equal talent. Nothing against Pat Hird, but continuing to play doubles with her would hold Angela back. That’s what Jones told her, and that’s what he suggested she tell the Wightman Cup captain when she called to set things up with Angela in 1956. She followed Jones’ advice, which left her without a doubles partner when she arrived at the Bournemouth tournament. In a last-minute, one-off pairing, Angela and Darlene Hard played together and won the title. But it would be at the French Championships and Wimbledon when two outsiders — Angela Buxton, an upper-class Jewish girl from England, and Althea Gibson, a poor African-American who grew up in New York City — would team together to make magical history, winning both titles.

A British national newspaper reported their Wimbledon victory with the headline “Minorities Win.” Gibson would also win the French singles title in 1956, and the Wimbledon and U.S. singles trophies in 1957 and 1958. It was Jones who urged Angela to pursue Gibson as a doubles partner: “No one would even speak to her, let alone play with her,” Buxton said. “She was always on her own. My coach said to me, you spend a lot of time with Althea, how about playing with her? I said to him, ‘Why don’t you ask her if she wants to play with me? Because if she doesn’t want to, she’ll say no to you but might not to me.’ She said yes, she’d like to play with me. We entered the French and we won and we kept it going through Wimbledon.”

That would be the beginning of a lifelong friendship between Angela and Althea, a bond that remained until Gibson’s death in late September 2003. Gibson not only briefly secured a doubles partner; she became an extended member of the Buxton family. “My mother was always brought up to help people if you’re in a position to help them,” Buxton said. “It was a foregone conclusion when someone like Althea came along and had no place to stay, and was with little money, that she would come live with us and she did.”

In fact, when Violet Buxton was approached by their London landlord that summer of 1956 with the message that another tenant had complained the family had a black person visiting, she was appalled. Violet suggested the landlord tell the person objecting to come see her themselves. That was the last mention of any issue with Gibson staying in the building. Later in life, when Gibson was ill and living in poverty in New Jersey, it was Buxton who went about raising money for her good friend, setting up a foundation that would raise $100,000, although much to the dismay of Buxton all the money never made it into Gibson’s hands. On one occasion when Buxton was in her South Florida apartment Gibson called to say she was thinking of ending her life. Buxton was cooking Friday night Sabbath dinner, but quickly turned off the stove and spoke to Gibson for hours, eventually talking her out of doing anything drastic.

Tom Okker – The 1968 U.S. Open Runner-Up Who Got The First-Prize Paycheck

August 24, 2018 by Admin

The 2018 U.S. Open marks the 50th anniversary of the tournament as an “Open” professional tournament, open to pros and amateurs. Arthur Ashe famously won the first edition of this new “Open Era” but as the famous idiom goes “you never remember who finished second.” That year, the runner-up was the great but much lesser known Dutch star Tom Okker. “The Flying Dutchman” was his nick-name and he and Ashe played a thrilling five-set final in 1968, with Ashe prevailing by a 14-12, 5-7, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 scoreline. Because Ashe was still an amateur player, Okker, despite the loss, was awarded the $14,000 first-prize paycheck.

Okker is Jewish and is featured in the book “The Greatest Jewish Tennis Players of All Time” by Sandy Harwitt, available here https://www.amazon.com/dp/193755936X/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_C3PFBb43JAT7B and the chapter on Okker is excerpted exclusively below.

The Flying Dutchman
TOM OKKER

In 1968, Arthur Ashe and Tom Okker — two players still considered to be amateurs — played in the final of the first-ever U.S. Open that would include professional players and offer prize money. Ashe would win, defeating Okker 14-12, 5-7, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, and collected $15 a day for his achievement. Okker, who had status as a “registered player” — meaning he was an amateur who could collect prize money at certain tournaments — scored the $14,000 top prize check for coming in as the runner-up. Ashe was the first African American man to win a major title. In a country that only recently went through a desegregation process, Ashe’s victory stood out to sports and non-sports fans alike.

That final at Forest Hills, however, is not my most vivid memory of Okker. Very early in my career — as in the first few months — I worked for the late Gene Scott, a former U.S. National semifinalist, who went on to have a multifaceted career in the game, highlighted by being a tournament director and publisher of the now defunct Tennis Week magazine. Gene also was an attorney. It would be hard to find many kids from the New York tri-state area who didn’t receive a start in the tennis business from Gene. As the newly named editor of Tennis Week, one of my perks was that Gene sent me down for the weekend to the Philadelphia tournament, where Okker would team with Wojtek Fibak of Poland to beat Peter Fleming and John McEnroe in a three-set final for the title on Sunday.

I planned on returning to New York after the tournament in the same way I arrived — on the Amtrak train. It provides convenient and pain-free travel between cities on the Eastern Seaboard. When I showed up in the lobby with my suitcase for a ride to the train station — most tournaments are very courteous in providing transportation — Tom Okker also was at the transport desk. When he heard me say I was going to the 30th Street station to get the train back to New York he piped in. He also was heading to New York but was flying. I’m sure I must have frowned as no one from New York would fly to Philly or vice versa. But Okker was moving on from New York so flying made sense. That was when he suggested that instead of taking the train, I should fly with him, as why shouldn’t we have each other’s company on the trip? I guess it sounded kind of decadent to fly between the two places, so I agreed. Plus, LaGuardia was actually an easy place for my mother to come pick me up.

It sounded like a great idea until the moment they were boarding the plane. This was no jet — it was a small propeller number that only had about three steps up to get into and probably had about 12-16 passenger seats. I remember I wasn’t so happy as the plane looked like it arrived straight from World War II service and I must have envisioned the pilot telling everyone it was time to start flapping their arms to keep the plane aloft and not to stop until we landed.

Tom obviously saw my concern. It was at that point he reached to his neck and pulled out a necklace crammed with hanging charms. As he told me that we’d be fine because he had all his good luck medals on, I noticed that two stood out: one was a Jewish symbol and the other representing Christianity. I asked him about it and he explained his father was Jewish and his mother wasn’t and he thought it was advisable to take his luck from all possible sources. He filled in the religious conversation by saying he saw himself as Jewish and had even played at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, winning the singles and mixed doubles titles in 1965.

We arrived in New York safely — it must have been Tom’s good luck trinkets — and that remains the only time I’ve ever flown that route.

Thomas Samuel Okker was born on February 22, 1944 in the Netherlands, a country that was under the occupation of Nazi Germany. The Netherlands had hoped to stay neutral when war broke out in 1939, but in mid-May 1940, the Germans bombed Rotterdam and the next day the country surrendered. The Dutch royal family took refuge in Britain, but the rest of the Dutch stayed behind to deal with being an occupied country. Prior to 1940 there were 140,000 Jews in Holland, but by the time the Netherlands were liberated in May 1945 only 30,000 had survived.

Growing up in a post-war-torn country, it took awhile for life to get back to normal and live beyond the basics. For Okker, It wasn’t until he turned 10 that he was introduced to tennis. When he started winning junior tournaments, Tom thought that pursuing tennis seriously would be fun.

Finding a path to the international tennis circuit, Okker would end up winning 31 singles titles and reaching the final of 24 additional events. He would rank among the top 10 for a number of years with a career high of No. 3 in March 1974. His best Grand Slam result was reaching that 1968 U.S. Open final, but he also reached the semifinals at the other three majors during his career. In 2014, he still sits high on the list of Top 50 all-time Open Era title leaders at No. 24 in the world with his 31 singles trophies.

Okker also was a prominent doubles player and on February 5, 1979, he became the fourth doubles player in the history of the official ATP doubles rankings to become ranked No. 1 — he would occupy the top spot for a total of 11 weeks in his career. He won two Grand Slam doubles titles: at the 1973 French Open with John Newcombe and at the 1976 U.S. Open with Marty Riessen. In all, Okker won 78 doubles titles, which was a record until Australian Todd Woodbridge broke it in 2005. Okker, who was one of the first to frequently use a heavy topspin shot, competed in 13 Davis Cup ties between 1964 and 1981, amassing a 15-20 win-loss record.

When Okker decided it was time to put down his racket in 1981, he became an art broker, first as a founding partner of Jaski Art Gallery in Amsterdam and, in 2005, opened Tom Okker Art in Hazerswoude-Dorp, the town outside of Amsterdam where he lives. Okker’s gallery is all things related to the CoBrA movement of art, which highlights abstract expressionist artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam.

Okker was enshrined into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.

Pierre Darmon – The Frenchman Who Helped Tennis Grow Into The Open Era

May 30, 2015 by Admin

As the tennis world is focused on the French Championships at Roland Garros, it is worth giving attention to a great French figure in the world of tennis, Pierre Darmon. Not only was Pierre an accomplished player, but one of the leading administrators who helped the sport immensely in the early days of Open Tennis. Sandra Harwitt profiled Darmon in her book “The Greatest Jewish Tennis Players of All Time,” a guide to the best and most influential Jewish tennis players in the history of the sport. The following is an excerpt from the book (available here http://www.amazon.com/dp/193755936X/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_iEgYub1G0P727 via Amazon.com) that profiles Darmon.

When Pierre Darmon made an appointment to meet me for a chat, he suggested we rendezvous in front of the Tenniseum, the Normandy-styled cottage on the grounds of Roland Garros that houses a fabulous museum dedicated to the history of French tennis. It seemed a natural choice of locale and not just because he helped in organizing the Tenniseum or because during the French Open the Tenniseum houses the tournament’s Final Eight Club where anyone who reached the singles quarterfinals or doubles semifinals can enjoy tournament hospitality. This Tenniseum venue was actually where Darmon had his office back when he was the tournament director of Roland Garros.

Before we went to enjoy a cup of coffee and talk about his life and times in tennis in the comfort of the Final Eight Club, Darmon wanted to show me something special in the Tenniseum. There, behind a glass wall on display, was a trophy cup. Darmon painted the picture of the importance of the cup with his words, telling how fellow Frenchman Benny Berthet, a jeweler before World War II, fashioned that cup out of tin cans. Berthet, who was born in New York but a Frenchman, became a prisoner of war during World War II and, along with other prisoners, built a tennis court where they were incarcerated. Berthet organized a tournament and designed the trophy, which was rather impressive looking.

“He was Jewish, too, and I was very, very close to him,” said Darmon, of his friend, who served as France’s Davis Cup captain from 1955 through 1965 and for whom the annual pre-Roland Garros charity day was named for many years. “His story, it’s really a fantastic story.”

Darmon, a French Open singles finalist and Wimbledon doubles finalist in 1963, was born on January 14, 1934 in Tunis, Tunisia. At age 17, he traveled to live on his own in Paris and France became his home. Initially, he was thinking he would attend the Sorbonne for university and pursue tennis, but doing both was difficult and he chose tennis over studying. Still a Tunisian citizen, his decision to give up his studies led to some consequences — he was obligated to serve in the Tunisian army for two-and-a-half years. “At that time, we were involved in the Algerian War, so when I stopped my studies I had to go to the army. Since I was the No. 1 Tunisian player at that time as such there was a place where sports people had a facility so during the season — the summer — we could play tennis and during the winter we had to go and serve in Algeria.”

Being Jewish was just a fact of life for Darmon, who is not particularly religious, and said his religious affiliation had no bearing whatsoever on his career: “I don’t think that was any significance at all. I never felt all through my years in tennis that there was any significance to whether I was or was not Jewish.” One year he was planning on playing the Maccabiah Games but instead he had to go to Algeria to take part in the war.

For Darmon, playing on the French Davis Cup team was a particular favorite memory. He competed in 34 Davis Cup ties from his first appearance in the international team competition in 1956. He had an impressive 44-17 singles record, but won only three of seven doubles matches. He holds the record for most wins and most singles victories for a French Davis Cup player and is second – by one tie – behind Francois Jauffret for most Davis Cup ties played.

As impressive as Darmon’s tennis career was, it was when he became involved in the business aspect of tennis that he truly had a major impact in the sport. Retired from tennis in 1968, Darmon dedicated himself to seeing tennis through the growing pains of going from an amateur game to an international professional sport.

“I got involved in the French association,” Darmon said. “I was picked to run Roland Garros, being like the general manager, which back then was a facility only open during the summer. When I got in there, they only had two contracts — Slazenger balls was on the leaderboard because they gave the balls to play with for free and there were four Coca-Cola signs and that contract was per year and just $1,000. That was what I found.

“It was 1973 when I was also the (French Open) tournament director and I was the one negotiating for bringing sponsors. I was the one who had negotiations to bring BNP Paribas in as a sponsor. But, in fact, I was indirectly dealing with them. The one who really made the deal for BNP was Benny Berthet.”

Darmon’s position as tournament director at Roland Garros was initially a volunteer position, after five years when he was provided some income for the position, he admitted it was basically a “symbolic” gesture.

One of his favorite accomplishments was borrowing the idea of exclusively located box seats that he saw during a Davis Cup rubber in Rome. He brought a similar concept to Roland Garros, having prime boxes installed on the stadium court: “I am proud about that because today these boxes are sold for $80,000 Euros, each box. And this is a lot of revenue. And they’re in the best position to see a match.”

When the ATP started as the men’s union in 1973, Darmon was asked to be a founding board member. “I created, with Jack Kramer, the first ATP office in Europe. And you see how life is that Benny Berthet had a big building on the Champs Elysee that he was the owner of and he gave us a little space where we could start a little ATP office in Europe.” Eventually, in 1980, Darmon became the Vice President for ATP: Europe, which by then was headquartered in Monte Carlo.

When he moved on from his Roland Garros position with the French Federation of Tennis, Darmon took a position with ProServ, an American management company, as their European Director from 1979 through 1990. He returned to the ATP Europe office as the Chief Executive from 1990 through 1996.

“You cannot compare something so different as the playing and the business and politics,” said Darmon, who finally quit playing tennis at age 77 in 2011. “I really must say I enjoyed every moment of my playing and then working and still am enjoying. I cannot complain.”

Darmon married Mexican player Rosie Reyes, a Roland Garros doubles champion, more than 50 years ago, and they have three children and four grandchildren. He was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1977. And in November 2002, the ITF honored Darmon with their Davis Cup Award of Excellence.

Renee Richards, The Greatest Trans-Sexual Athlete

February 13, 2015 by Admin

The following is an excerpt from Sandy Harwitt’s book “The Greatest Jewish Tennis Players of All Time” ($19.95, New Chapter Press, available here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/193755936X/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_iEgYub1G0P727 via Amazon.com) on Renee Richards, who not only is considered one of the greatest Jewish tennis players of all time, but also, perhaps, the greatest trans-sexual athlete of all-time.

Unless someone was living under a rock in the late 1970s, they knew who Renee Richards was even if they weren’t a tennis fan. After all, it was kind of hard to miss — or ignore — the headlines about the man who became a woman and was suing for the right to play the 1977 U.S. Open as a woman. When Richards won the right to participate, as a woman, in that 1977 U.S. Open, and other women’s tournaments, she became the only player in history to play top-level tennis as a man and a woman — although possible, it’s highly unlikely that anyone will follow in Richards’ footsteps in that regard. Richards started life as Richard Raskind on August 19, 1934, the youngest child of two physicians — his father was an orthopedic surgeon, his mother a psychiatrist. Richards, who grew up in the leafy New York City quasi-suburban community of Forest Hills, described in her first memoir Second Serve how an older sister would push her penis into his body and say ‘Now you’re a little girl.’ If that was not disturbing enough, he also revealed that his mother would, at times, dress him in a little girl’s slip instead of traditional boys’ clothes.

Despite coming out of that childhood with a feminine image of himself, hardly surprising under the circumstances, Dick was outwardly the total package of the all-American man: tall, good-looking, intelligent and athletic. Publicly, he was living a life that would make other men jealous — attending Yale, where he was the captain of the tennis team, going to medical school at the University of Rochester, serving as a naval lieutenant, becoming a world-class ophthalmologist, marrying a model and having a son. Dick was so popular at Yale that he was asked to join a fraternity that extended few invites to fellow Jewish students.

Throughout that whole period, Dick was unable to totally suppress his urge to be a woman. At college, unbeknownst to others, he would shave his legs. At times, he would dress in women’s clothing in private. At one point, after taking female hormone injections off and on, Raskind moved to Paris and lived as a transgender individual. He traveled to Casablanca, Morocco, where there was a doctor who performed sex reassignment surgery that was still unavailable in the United States. In the end, Dick’s medical background overtook his urge to finally become Renee, a name which means reborn in French, and was how he had begun to refer to his female persona. He was worried that rumors he heard that the clinic lacked proper hygiene for surgeries were accurate, so he left and went home still a man.

Dick went on with life and was a well-known amateur tennis player in the East. He even played at the U.S. Nationals with his best result being two second-round finishes in 1955 and 1957.

Following the dissolution of his three-year marriage to Barbara and countless times in therapy to deal with his Renee side, in 1975, Richard Raskind underwent sex reassignment surgery to become Renee Richards. His son, Nick, was 3 at the time and until he was 8 was uninformed his father was now a woman — Renee would dress as a man, complete with a wig, when she spent time with her son. To this day, even as an adult in his early 40s, Nick Raskind calls Renee “Dad,” as that is who Renee is to him.

In talking to National Public Radio’s Neal Conan in 1977 to promote her second book No Way Renee: The Second Half of My Life, Richards spoke of surgery: “I sought out Dr. Harry Benjamin,” said Richards, noting that it was Benjamin, an endocrinologist and sexologist who coined the phrase transsexual, and who treated Christine Jorgensen, the first famous face of transsexualism in the United States. “Harry took care of me and counseled me through those turbulent years and got me started on my hormonal treatment with estrogen. And I was very lucky when he referred me to Dr. Roberto Granato in New York, who was the surgeon who performed the surgery on me. So I, actually, was very fortunate. I wasn’t so fortunate in the public’s acceptance…”

It was Renee’s initial impulse to keep her previous identity as Richard Raskind under wraps. She was so focused on remaining a private citizen that she chose to relocate herself — and her ophthalmologic practice — across the country to Southern California. She just wanted to live life as the woman she always felt she longed to be. Before she left, she received some important counsel from a longtime pal involved in the East Coast tennis scene: “My gynecologist in New York, who is a very close friend of mine, gave me some advice that would come to hit home years later,” Richards told Neal Conan during their interview. “He said, ‘You’re a perfectly normal woman now, except that you look like you’ve had a hysterectomy. But don’t try to play tennis out there when you move to California, because nobody is going to not notice that windup on the forehand that you have.’ I didn’t really believe Don — it’s Don Rubell — and I did play as an amateur in California, trying to remain quiet about it.”

As it turned out, Rubell’s forewarning was accurate and he came to the opinion with good knowledge. Rubell was well entrenched in the New York tennis community. His father, Phil, was a teaching pro and even reached the finals at the over-90 world tennis championships. His younger brother, the late Steve Rubell, a co-owner of the Studio 54 discotheque, played No. 1 singles for Syracuse University. His wife, Mera, was the U.S. President of Ellesse, the Italian company that dressed many top players in the ‘70s and ‘80s. His son, Jason, would be all-American and an ACC singles champion while playing at Duke. And Don himself, was the captain of the Cornell University team when he was there, played at the U.S. Nationals, and ranked third in the East behind Gene Scott and Herb Fitzgibbon and ahead of one, Richard Raskind.

If she had listened to Rubell and stayed away from tennis in California, it’s likely life would have gone on under the radar for Renee. But in the end, Renee just couldn’t not play — tennis was essential in her life: “Tennis was a refuge because it’s something that I love to do, and it was something that I was good at and I could have success at doing. And it was so clear-cut — the geometry of a tennis court and you against your opponent,” Renee said on that NPR “Talk of the Nation” radio show. She started to enter local women’s tournaments and found herself playing — and winning — the La Jolla championship in 1976. As Rubell predicted, someone, as in a reporter, noticed that windup forehand and the power serve the other women didn’t possess. The story broke quickly that a former man was playing

at tennis events in California as a woman. Later, in the summer of 1976, Renee’s old friend and fellow Yale alum Gene Scott asked whether she wanted to play in the Tennis Week Open at South Orange, New Jersey, a professional women’s event where he was the tournament director. She did play, which started a “Keep Renee Richards out of women’s tennis” campaign.

Desperate to prevent any possibility of Richards attempting to play the U.S. Open, the United States Tennis Association reacted quickly, saying that Richards would not be welcomed in the U.S. Open women’s draw. Now the ball was, so to speak, on Renee’s racket — go back to her practice as a prominent eye surgeon, or fight for the right to play tennis as a woman. Never one to let a challenge go by, Renee filed suit against the USTA: “After 30 years of apologizing to myself and to the world in general, I was through apologizing,” she wrote in Second Serve. “It was time for a savvy lawyer.” Renee obviously found the right attorney because in 1977 the New York Supreme Court, after hearing persuasive medical testimony that the surgery and hormonal treatment has indeed turned Renee Richards into a woman, ruled in her favor. She hadn’t set out to play at the U.S. Open but now that she was in, she joined the women’s circuit. She predicted that because of her age — she already had turned 40 — she could never become a real factor in the women’s game. Her best singles ranking was No. 19 and best result was reaching the 1977 U.S. Open doubles final with Betty Ann Stuart (mother of former men’s player Taylor Dent), losing to Martina Navratilova and Betty Stove.

Renee traveled the world and despite everyone believing everything regarding her was about her sex switch, it wasn’t always the focus. In the Cross-Court Winner chapter on Richards, written by Emily Bazelon in the book Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame, there was a story that Renee, who had taken to wearing a mezuzah after noticing many players wore crosses on necklaces, told of playing a 1977 tournament in Santiago, Chile: “My opponent said, ‘I never saw so many people cheering for you. I said, ‘You don’t understand — this is a Jewish country club.’”

Not surprisingly, the locker room was somewhat divided on whether Renee belonged on the tour. Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova believed she should be able to play. Chris Evert and Virginia Wade admitted to not being sure. And there were some players, who would sometimes sing in a whisper the 1966 Left Banke hit, Walk Away Renee when they saw Richards around.

In the end, Renee stayed involved in tennis for five years, first playing, and then coaching, most notably working with Navratilova when she won back-to-back Wimbledon titles (1978=79). She then returned to her life as a physician, choosing to return to New York to do so.

As the years have marched on, Richards has had time to look back and think about everything that’s happened in her life. While she strongly believes having the sex change operation was unavoidable, she is now not convinced that choosing to be a public curiosity by playing tennis was the right choice: “I made the fateful decision to go and fight the legal battle to be able to play as a woman and stay in the public eye and become this symbol,” Renee told Reuters in February of 2007. “I could have gone back to my office and just carried on with my life and the notoriety would have died down. I would have been able to resume the semblance of a normal

life. I could have lived a more private life but I chose not to. I have misgivings about that. I am nostalgic about what would have happened if I had done it the other way.”

Richards, who was inducted into the Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame in 2000, spent her last day in the operating room of New York Eye and Ear, which she refers to as “the infirmary,” on December 18, 2013. In a posting on her Facebook page, Richards told of her final day as a surgeon, saying, ”I was born for two things; to play tennis and operate on eyes. It’s what I do, it’s who I am and now I don’t do either anymore. But that’s okay. I did what I was meant to do.”

Who Is The Greatest Jewish Female Tennis Player Of All Time?

December 15, 2014 by Admin

Much has been written, discussed and argued on who is the greatest female tennis player of all time. Margaret Court won more major singles titles than any other woman (24) and more majors in singles, doubles and mixed (62), but Martina Navratilova, it has been argued, faced stiffer competition in her winning 59 total majors, including a final title at the age of 49. Serena Williams is in the discussion based on her amazing power and dominance in the current game. Steve Flink, in his book “The Greatest Tennis Matches of All Time” (for sale here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008B9CIN4/ref=cm_sw_r_pi_dp_V51Jub1SEPNM7) gives the nod to Steffi Graf with 22 major singles titles.

However, there is very little argument on who the greatest JEWISH female tennis player is. That would go to a player named Suzy Kormoczy from Hungary.

In her book “The Greatest Jewish Tennis Players of All Time” (available for sale here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/193755936X/ref=cm_sw_r_pi_dp_A41Jub0S0TAWV) Sandy Harwitt profiles the 1958 French women’s singles champion in this book excerpt below.

The search for the most accomplished Jewish woman to play tennis requires some heavy research. But persistence often pays off as it did on this occasion with the discovery that the late Hungarian player Zsuza Kormoczy qualifies as the top Jewish woman to ever play the game. What enables Kormoczy to win the nod is her status as the winner of the 1958 French Championships, making Hungary’s 1958 Sportswoman of the Year the only Jewish woman to date to win one of the four most coveted singles trophies in tennis.

Suzy Kormoczy is barely on the tip of anyone’s tongue. Most have never heard of the tennis talent and finding information about the Hungarian – there doesn’t seem to be much of an offering in Hungarian no less English — is a challenge.

Born on August 25, 1924, Kormoczy is the pride and joy of Hungarian tennis. While other Hungarians might be more familiar to tennis fans — Andrea Temesvari and Balazs Taroczy come to mind — it is “Suzy K” who is the country’s greatest success story.

By 1939, Kormoczy was traveling abroad and had the opportunity to meet tennis idols from America — Bill Tilden and Alice Marble — when at Wimbledon. She asked Marble, who would win the Wimbledon title that year with a 6-2, 6-0 win over Briton Kay Stammers, for an autograph. Marble wrote, “To Suzy, I hope you will someday win Wimbledon, Alice Marble.”

Kormoczy would never win Wimbledon — clay and not grass was her surface of choice — but she would come fairly close. The petite Hungarian would reach the Wimbledon semifinals in 1958, just weeks after winning the French title, and the quarterfinals in 1953 and 1955.

A resilient baseliner, the terre battue at Roland Garros and at other European events, was where Kormoczy performed to high standards. In 1958, following rigorous pre-Roland Garros training that included running and gymnastics, Kormoczy, at the ripe old age of 33, earned her place in history. She captured the French National crown with a 6-4, 1-6, 6-2 victory over Shirley Bloomer Brasher of Britain, becoming the oldest ever French champion, a distinction she still holds. Following behind Kormoczy as the next oldest French champions are Serena Williams (2013): 31 years, 8 months, Nelly Adamson-Landry (1948): 31 years and 6 months, and Chris Evert (1986): 31 years and 5 months.

As the defending champion in 1959, Kormoczy returned to the final, but couldn’t hoist the trophy again. She lost out to 18-year-old Englishwoman Christine Truman 6-4, 7-5, who became the youngest ever French women’s champion until she lost that honor to a 17-year-old Steffi Graf in 1987.

Although formal rankings were still decades away, sports journalists would take to ranking players on their own. And in 1958, when Kormoczy won eight of the nine tournaments she entered, losing in the Wimbledon semifinal to Briton Angela Mortimer 6-0, 6-1, it appeared unanimous that Kormoczy would occupy the No. 2 spot. At home, she was feted with the first-ever Hungarian Sportswoman of the Year award in honor of her incredible 1958 season.

In Hungary, she would win the national singles title six times, and the doubles or mixed doubles trophies on 10 occasions. She first won at home as a 16-year-old in 1940, taking the doubles and mixed doubles title.

From what is known, Kormoczy suffered with kidney stones throughout her career, which disrupted her ability to play at times. Following her career as a player, Kormoczy would become a coach at Vasas, her club, and the manager of the National Tennis Association.

Kormoczy passed away at age 82 on September 16, 2006. Tributes calling attention to her incredible life were offered by a number of players who followed her footsteps into professional tennis. Andrea Temesvari said, “This is a huge loss for the Hungarian tennis life. She belonged to the all-time greats.” Balazs Taroczy said, “The tennis and her family were her life. She loved her club, “Vasas” where I also played. I’m sorry for not being able to watch her play, but I know she was a big fighter, a wonderful player, and a great person.”

In 2007, Zsuzsa Kormoczy was posthumously inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.